The Subscription model is more transparent, accessible, convenient, and affordable than the traditional pay-per-service model. Its users can opt-in or opt-out of the services anytime. Until now, the healthcare industry has followed a conventional fee-for-service payment structure, where for each visit that the patient makes, they have to pay a fixed sum of charge for the services received.
The Subscription model, however, follows a slightly different method than the existing payment methods. Today, there are numerous ongoing debates on if the subscription-based model could be successful in Healthcare. So, can the Subscription model become the new normal for the healthcare industry?
A type of recurring payment structure, the Subscription-based model, for receiving a product or service, allows the user to pay a set price for a yearly, monthly, or for a predefined time. Already effective in many industries, this model adds value for customers by enhancing their experience. It also ensures a long-term and robust connection between the consumers and service providers.
In the Healthcare industry, the subscription-based model offers the patient access to many healthcare services like insurance, specialist consulting, primary care, and telehealth services. For this, the patient can usually pay a fixed annual, monthly, or quarterly fee to the healthcare care service provider based on their needs and the care required.
Some benefits of the subscription-based model include:
- It ensures routine monitoring, regular checkups, and easy diagnosis of a disease that often gets postponed due to ignorance.
- It provides many exciting and attractive offers to the customers like a free consultation, discounts on medicines and tests, and ease of trying new services and products.
- It helps the companies to widen their loyal customer base and foster a long-term relationship with the customers.
- It helps the healthcare providers to predict the supply and demand effortlessly.
A few drawbacks of the subscription-based model are:
- Possibilities of issues in payment gateways, fraudulent transactions, privacy, data security and risk management.
- Difficulty affording the upfront subscription fee for a majority of the poor and uninsured population.
- Difficulty in the adoption of a subscription-based model in developing countries due to a shortage of healthcare professionals.
Many important companies have been experimenting with creating universally adaptable Subscription Models in the Healthcare business that can offer many attractive plans to serve the healthcare needs of the patients.
Indeed there exist a few drawbacks, but they are mainly because the subscription-based model is in the infant stage in the healthcare domain. However, a few critical factors such as the growth of remote/telemedicine monitoring, an increase in the young age working population, data privacy & security, and smooth payment methods and options are likely to drive the advancement in subscription-based models in healthcare shortly.
